"Chief Executive" magazine announced that P&G, IBM and General Electric earned the top spots in its 2014 Best Companies for Leaders ranking.

P&G retained its #1 rank from 2013, while IBM and General Electric switched at #2 and #3. New to the Top 10 rankings are Accenture (#4), Unilever (#5) and Hormel Foods (#9).

"These are the companies that truly make people a priority by investing the most time and effort into talent development," said J.P. Donlon, editor-in-chief of Chief Executivemagazine. "While most companies say they value their people, these are the organizations that make it happen on a daily basis—in good times and bad."

The ultimate question for corporate leaders is whether leadership development pays off? Yes, says the data, which shows that the top 15 percent of companies surveyed for the ranking generated average market capitalization growth of 200 percent over a 10-year period (2003 to 2013) versus 85 percent average market capitalization growth for companies that ranked in the bottom 15 percent.

Created in collaboration with Chally Group Worldwide and the Human Capital Institute, the ranking is based on five factors:

1. Having a formal leadership development process in place.
2. The commitment level of the CEO to the leadership development program, as measured by the percentage of time spent.
3. The depth of the leadership funnel, as measured by the percentage of senior- and middle- management positions filled internally.
4. The number of other companies that report recruiting from the company being evaluated.

5. A shareholder value/performance metric based on the 10-year change in market capitalization.
The 40 Best Companies for Leaders were chosen from among public companies with minimum revenue of $1 billion. "Chief Executive" magazine also ranked the 10 best private companies, which were led by Deloitte, PwC and Transplace. The list of the 10 Best Private Companies for Leaders can be found here.